A Sisyphean Task
by Moon Raven2
Summary: One hundred - or fewer - Criminal Minds one shots, all characters, all genres. Just starting, so get in on the ground floor! Story 7 is a Reid/JJ drabble; prompt Breath.
1. Notes and Caveats

I wanted to go ahead and edit this to add an "author's note" chapter just to clear up any confusion. :)

I've entitled this "A Sisyphean Task" because that's exactly what it is: my attempt to complete the fanfic100 challenge. I'm using four previously written stories, all of which are already published here at ff(dot)net, so I only (ha) need to write 96 more.

Unless I indicate otherwise, all of the chapters in this story will be free-standing; they won't relate to one another as a continuing story. A 90+ part series of one-shots, if you will.

I'll name each chapter with the prompt and the characters or pairing. If the names are separated with a comma, it indicates a pairing - e.g., "Hotch,Haley" in chapter 1 - but if they're separated with a space - e.g., "Reid Jackson" in chapter 2 - then those characters just appear in the story together.

I'll keep this document updated with the chapter list so you guys can have a quick reference. :D

1: The Worst Fourth Pirate Ever (Beginnings; Hotch/Haley)

2: The Bet (Lunch; Reid/Jackson friendship)

3: A Different Man (Drink; Hotch)

4: Home (Home; Prentiss)

5: The Space Between (Ends and (lottery) Space; Hotch/Haley)

6: On Fire (Fire and (lottery) Cell; Reid)

7: The Work of Breathing (Breath; Reid/JJ friendship)

Enjoy!

I love reviews!


	2. Beginnings: Hotch,Haley

**The Worst Fourth Pirate Ever  
Pairing(s):** Haley/Hotch  
**Timeline:** pre-series  
**Prompt:** #1 Beginnings

**a/n:** I've decided to do the fanfic100 challenge, and I've written...well, a few. Not too many. I think I might end up putting all these as one llllonng story with 96 chapters rather than 96 separate stories. Doesn't that sound easier? I'll put the prompt and character(s) in the title so that you can just skip to what you want in the lil drop down. :)

**Disclaimer(s):** I own nothing. Suing would be both pointless and cruel. Thanks to the folks who own everything for letting me take it all out and play. :D

* * *

Aaron Hotchner didn't usually make a fool out of himself. In fact, it was something he avoided with near-obsessive care. He hadn't rushed for a fraternity because he didn't want to go through all the hazing BS involved. He played sports, but not competitively, because he wasn't good enough; he didn't do things he wasn't good at, as a general rule.

Aaron Hotchner kept his life carefully controlled. His childhood had been constant, discordant chaos, and he intended to make his adult life the exact opposite. He was going to be a lawyer; the law was orderly and elegant and as divorced from his upbringing as anything could possibly get.

Of course, Aaron Hotchner, disciple of order and control, hadn't counted on seeing (not even meeting – _seeing_) Haley Brooks. One glance across a crowded classroom was all it took, and the next thing Aaron knew, he was seeking her out. Hunting her down. _Stalking_ was too strong a word, but only just. He couldn't get enough of her, even though she barely seemed to notice him, and he found himself, in an almost out-of-body moment, signing up to audition for _Pirates of Penzance_.

Aaron Hotchner knew nothing about theatre. He didn't know Gilbert and Sullivan from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He'd gone through a standard boyhood obsession with pirates, however, so he figured it couldn't be _all_ bad.

He was both wrong and right.

_He_ was terrible. The worst fourth pirate ever, in fact. As someone who made a policy of never making a fool of himself, the play and his performance in it (mostly the latter) were gross violations. Just the hat was an embarrassment, and nothing like his memories of menacing Captain Hook or hulking Blackbeard.

But Haley Brooks, with her wicked, glowing smile and her lilting, electric laugh, noticed him. She noticed him even as he looked like a total moron, and when she offered to give him acting tips, a mischievous twinkle brightening those already luminous eyes, he accepted with a wild mixture of elation and relief.

"I'm Aaron," he told her, trying to play it cool and probably failing.

"I know," she said, smiling with mystery, and his heart took off as though it had grown wings.

He grinned like a fool and didn't care if he looked it.


	3. Lunch: Reid Jackson

**Title:** The Bet**  
Character(s): **Reid/OFC (friendship)**  
Prompt:** #57 Lunch**  
Rating:** FRT**  
Summary:** in my story "Endgame," Jackson bet Reid he couldn't guess her degrees; he won (sneakily, I might add), so she has to buy him lunch every day for a week**  
Author's Notes:** Reading "Endgame" might be fun, but not necessary. Standard disclaimers apply: I own nothing; suing would be pointless and cruel.

**Day 1**  
"Fries?" he asked, bewildered. "You're just getting fries?"

"Yeah. I mean, _large_ fries." She smiled at the guy working the register and paid, and the two agents found a table in the small, crowded restaurant to wait for their order.

He split open a peanut with careful concentration and chewed the legume as he pondered. "You must be hungry; their large fries are huge."

She watched him with luminous glass-green eyes and took a sip of her Diet Coke. At last she sighed, knowing he wouldn't let it go. "I'm a vegetarian, Spencer."

He blinked, thunderstruck. "But – why didn't you tell me? I took a vegetarian to a _burger_ place?!" he wailed. "They don't even have _salads_!"

He sounded utterly embarrassed, so she grinned with bright reassurance. "It's ok," she said, munching a peanut. "They have really awesome fries."

**Day 2**  
"Why isn't there a word that rhymes with _orange_?" he asked her, apropos of nothing.

She frowned; took a bite of sandwich. "Is this what you think about in your spare time?"

"Sometimes. Either that or…hey, have I ever shown you my physics magic?" His finely-made face was open, eager, and she couldn't help but smile.

"I haven't had the pleasure yet, no."

"I'll have to show you sometime. Remind me." She rolled her eyes at the idea of him forgetting something and nearly missed the hopeful expression that suddenly brightened his normally pensive eyes.

"Hey," he said again, gesturing toward the last few chips on her plate, "are you going to eat those?"

**Day 3**  
"Do you know how many parasites and organisms and _diseases_ could be lurking in uncooked fish?" he demanded in a tight, horror-stricken voice. He had stopped in front of the sushi restaurant she had selected and wouldn't take another step; she stood between him and the door with her arms crossed in amused frustration.

"They have _cooked_ sushi. Look, you asked me to pick today, and this was my choice. You didn't have to agree."

He fidgeted. "It's not all raw?" He sounded both incredulous and hopeful, and she had to fight a smile.

"No. Would I lie to you? Now come _on_; I'm starving."

Reluctantly he followed her inside, looking like a man being led to his death.

**Day 4**  
"So how _is_ a raven like a writing desk?" he mused aloud across his bowl of curry.

"I don't think there's really supposed to be an answer, Spencer." She tore off a chunk of naan and dipped it into the spicy, savory sauce; chewed with relish.

"Well, yeah, Carroll doesn't supply us with the answer, but surely there is one," he protested.

She raised a brow at him. "I don't think so. The Hatter is, after all, mad, and everything in Wonderland is backwards and topsy-turvy. I don't think there's an answer at all; it's just a riddle for the sake of being riddling."

Her theory seemed to disappoint him. "Oh."

"Cheer up, kiddo. There's always ye olde chicken-or-egg conundrum to keep you busy."

He brightened immediately. "Actually, I think I might've solved that one…"

**Day 5**  
"If there were only one type of cookie left in the world, and that's the only type of cookie you could have forever, what cookie would you want it to be?"

She blinked at him over her bowl of tom yum soup. "Why would there be only one type of cookie? Was there a cookie plague? A cookie blight? The Cookie Monster went on a rampage? How could that even happen?"

"It's a hypothetical situation, Jack. Just go with it." He dipped a bite of chicken satay into peanut sauce and chewed happily; waited for her answer.

She set down her spoon; sighed. "Cookies are no joking matter, Spencer. The scenario you propose is almost as horrifying as a zombie apocalypse."

He snorted. "Nothing's as bad as a zombie apocalypse," he disagreed almost scornfully.

"Imagine a life without Oreos," she challenged.

He frowned. "Well that could be your cookie. You know, your one cookie."

"Ok, then imagine a life without chocolate chip."

His face scrunched as he considered. "I see your point," he finally admitted. "Ok, so what if you could have _two_ types of cookies…"

* * *

_Just some quick, light-hearted silliness. Hope you enjoyed it! Drop me a review, why dontcha? :D_


	4. Drink: Hotch

**Title:** A Different Man**  
Character:** Aaron Hotchner/Hotch**  
Prompt:** #60 Drink**  
Rating:** FRT**  
Summary:** On his way home after the case in Canada, Hotch contemplates a stiff drink.**  
Author's Notes:** Takes place after "To Hell…And Back," so a spoiler(ish) or two for those. I don't think Hotch has an alcohol problem. Standard disclaimers apply: I own nothing; suing would be pointless and cruel.

What a fucking nightmare. The case; the UNSUB(s?); William Hightower; the pigs. The goddamn pigs. He shuddered; gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. He couldn't wait to get home to the comforting confines of his apartment. He couldn't wait to open the bottle he kept on his sideboard and pour two generous fingers of Scotch.

He couldn't wait to have that liquid fire sliding down his throat. It would – had always – washed away the cares of his day, if just for a moment.

But he was careful. Aaron Hotchner knew, better than anyone, the consequences of losing oneself in that amber fog. It smelled of smoke and peat moss and numb, anesthetized comfort, and from the outside it looked so…inviting. Like a will-o'-the-wisp, ready to lure you off your safe and careful path.

His father's drink of choice had been cheap gin, as cliché as that was, and Hotch had avoided the stuff like the plague since he'd been old enough to understand what the alcohol drove a normally sane man to do. He hated the smell, the taste, the _feel_ of gin, and just the sight of that familiar bottle brought on a rush of memory – foul breath; a haze of pain; a lash like fire; tears and snot and the bitter flavor of shame.

Aaron Hotchner wanted the momentary release the bottle offered him, but unlike his father he didn't drown in it. He didn't _need_ it. He would take his drink, and maybe another, and then he would put the lid back on the bottle and continue his evening.

He was not the man his father had been, and for that he could only be profoundly, deeply, immeasurably grateful.


	5. Home: Prentiss

**Title:** Home**  
Fandom:** Criminal Minds**  
Character(s): **Prentiss**  
Prompt(s):** #90 Home and Story Lottery #29 Home Sweet Home**  
Summary:** Prentiss hasn't felt at home for a long, long time.**  
Author's Notes:** I'm using this for the Home prompt on fanfic100, and the Home Sweet Home prompt on Story Lottery. To do otherwise would seem redundant. Standard disclaimers apply: I own nothing; suing would be pointless and cruel.

Emily Prentiss was an ambassador's daughter. On paper it was an impressive fact. In her head the words had always rung…hollow. Old bells long-neglected clanging for no purpose other than to cause a stir. That's what her mother's title usually did when people heard it: caused an empty, meaningless stir. "Oh, _that_ Prentiss, of _course_…"

Emily hated politics. She hated the wheels her mother's title had tried to grease for her as she fought her way up through the FBI. She said _tried_, because in reality she never traded on her mother's position to get ahead – people just assumed she did. That was perhaps more frustrating than anything.

Her childhood had been rootless, nomadic, but she rarely had it in her to regret her upbringing. True, sometimes she heard stories from her colleagues about dinners around a table, or afternoon ball games, and she felt a pang. But mostly she was grateful. Now, after one of those cases that left her feeling like her soul had been sucked out of her with a straw, she could walk through the door of her ruthlessly neat apartment (her mother had left that impression, if no other) and feel that elusive, intangible, all-important sense of _homecoming_. It wasn't a sensation she ever got used to. It wasn't something that dulled over time, or lessened, or became somehow diluted.

Every trip from the hallway through her front door packed the same emotional punch as the last one had, and Emily knew it was because she had grown up feeling like she had no place to call home. Now she could hang _her_ pictures on the walls. She could buy furniture _she_ liked, rather than just pick a pre-furnished place. She could buy…tchotchke!!

Emily Prentiss, ambassador's daughter, had never owned a tchotchke in her life, Garcia had been horrified to learn. Within minutes of snooping out the alarming fact, whirlwind Garcia had made plans for BAU ladies to spend a Saturday at the local flea market. Emily had felt vaguely alarmed, but Garcia and J.J. assured her she'd have a good time.

They'd been right, and she'd come home with enough tchotchke to impress Garcia and send her mother into catatonic shock. She'd bought mismatched plates. Jelly jars to use as glasses. Small figurines of varying sizes with no discernable purpose. A wind chime made of reclaimed sea glass and driftwood (it was pretty). And, best of all, several different salt and pepper shakers shaped like any number of random objects. They were so delightfully, wonderfully, epically tacky that she couldn't help but grin like a cat lapping up cream every time she looked at them.

Her mother would be traumatized.

Emily's goal in decorating her home wasn't to thwart her mother's taste…per se…but there was a sort of grim satisfaction in doing so. An ambassador's home was, after all, something of a showplace, and for the active little girl she had been, _living_ in it had always been difficult. Once she realized she would be in northern Virginia for a while – long enough to get comfortable anyway – she had been determined to make her place of residence something closer to the heart.

It was Friday night. Emily could be out with the girls…or with a man…but instead she was at home, alone, and she didn't regret it for a second. She poured red wine into a jelly jar; Dino beamed at her with his uneven, goofy grin, and she returned his smile without thinking. She preferred Flinstones grape jelly jars to Waterford crystal. She ran her fingers over the milky sea glass to hear its tinkle as she passed through the living room. Settled down on the cream-colored sofa and tugged the umber chenille throw over her legs.

She could do some paperwork, but she hated bringing work here. This was her sanctuary away from all that, her oasis and escape. After a few moments' debate, she fired up _The Last of the Mohicans_ on the DVD player. Daniel Day-Lewis was always a good companion for a cozy night at home. She hoisted Dino in salute, and settled back to enjoy her peace.


	6. Ends and Space: Hotch,Haley

**Title:** The Space Between**  
Character(s): **Aaron Hotchner/Haley Hotchner**  
Prompt(s):** ff100 #3 Ends and story lottery #24 Space**  
Rating:** FRT**  
****Summary:** The space that comes at the end of a marriage, the end of a life. It can be a hard thing to get used to.**  
Author's Notes:** Spoilers for "100" within. Also, if I have some of the details wrong about the breakup of Hotch and Haley's marriage, I apologize; I haven't seen those episodes in a while. I'm sure you'll forgive me. Standard disclaimers apply: I own nothing; suing would be pointless and cruel.

**The space between  
Where you're smiling high****  
Is where you'll find me if I get to go.****  
The space between  
The bullets in our firefight****  
Is where I'll be hiding, waiting for you.**  
-The Dave Matthews Band, "The Space Between"

**2007**  
Haley Hotchner rolled over in bed and reached for his familiar, solid warmth, but she found herself groping at empty air. He wasn't there. His side of the bed was empty; cold. He was on a case…?

No. He'd gone to Wisconsin, even though she'd begged him not to. He couldn't give it up, that thrill he got from profiling, from shining the light on the worst mankind had to offer, from the adrenaline rush the whole thing gave him. It had been the last straw, and she'd left him. She'd taken Jack and walked out, and when he'd finally returned from chasing the bad guys (as he always did, she admitted grudgingly, even if it wasn't on the schedule she would have set for either of them), she'd told him about her own transgressions.

She sat up; ran small, shaking hands through sleep-tangled blond hair. She remembered his look of hurt and betrayal. Aaron Hotchner was a man who only understood the concept of adultery in theory – a vague abstraction that didn't apply to him or his life and had no business butting its messy little nose in where it didn't belong – and with his wife's words, suddenly everything he thought he'd known had been turned on its head.

It hadn't been an affair, not technically. It's just…she felt so _alone_ so much of the time, and he'd been there for her when Aaron was off being Hotch, perfect G Man. It was no excuse, but it was all she had, and some part of her knew their marriage had been over long before she started making excuses for spending time with another man.

Sighing, Haley turned her back on the empty side of the bed. She still loved Aaron, but sometimes love wasn't enough. When it ceased to be, the only thing left was empty space.

* * *

Even before Aaron Hotchner opened his eyes he could feel her absence like a missing limb. That was a flawed simile, he knew, because they say you _don't_ feel a missing limb; it still itches and aches like it's actually there, attached, and it's only when you reach out to scratch or rub it that you remember it's gone. He didn't have to reach across the bed to know that Haley was gone; the cold emptiness where her warmth should have been told him everything.

He sat up; rubbed his aching chest (the place where his heart used to be) with a large, blunt-fingered hand. She'd taken his son and gone, and he'd returned home to an empty, echoing house. When she'd finally come back, she'd told him about the other man. Not an affair, she'd said, just some company. Just someone to spend some time with, someone who spoke in complete sentences about something other than apple juice and Legos.

Twenty years gone in a simple, tear-filled confession.

The ironic part? He didn't blame her. Not really. He wasn't even all that surprised. If _he'd_ been the one left at home with the baby while _she'd_ been off chasing the bad guys all the time, he might've gone a bit stir crazy, too. He should've encouraged her to go back to work after Jack started preschool, but she'd said she was happy being at home with him…and with Hotch traveling as much as he did, it made sense to have one of them home more often…

He still loved her. He'd never stop loving her. He wondered if he gave up the job, or at least maybe cut back on it, if then they could… He shook his head. It was impossible. He'd tried, or at least…he'd tried to try, and it…it just wasn't in him to give up. He lived for the job…for the…he had to admit it, at least partly for the adrenaline of it. He loved Haley and he loved Jack, but he couldn't live without the job. Pathetic, maybe, but true.

He rose from the bed and padded to the sideboard in the living room; poured two fingers of Scotch into a cut tumbler and knocked it back. Dark olive eyes studied the bare room, and he sighed. The small exhalation did little to fill the stark space, and he wondered if his life would ever be full again.

**2009**  
Aaron Hotchner should have been used to the empty space next to him in bed by now. He and Haley had been apart for two years; surely that was enough time to come to grips with it…

But it felt different now. Some part of him had always held out hope for their relationship, but now there was…nothing. Emptiness, with parameters as set by one George Foyet. The Reaper had taken her more definitively than Hotch's own driving ambition ever could have. He flexed his hands; felt the satisfying sting of flesh broken against Foyet's skull.

He shouldn't find it _so_ satisfying.

He didn't care that he did.

Haley was dead. Foyet was dead. Were the scales of justice balanced? Somehow it didn't feel that way. Somehow he felt…empty. That was all. Such a small word, used too often, yet so profoundly apt to describe how he felt. Or his lack of feeling, as it were, since he wasn't sure he was capable of feeling anything at the moment.

He stretched out an arm; draped it across the pillow where Haley's head would have rested once upon a time. Not in this bed, though, never here, but still the sentiment was the same. He spread his palm as though cradling her skull with infinite, loving tenderness.

He stayed like that for he knew not how long. His hands hurt. His heart hurt. He ignored it all and concentrated on the memory of mischevious, twinkling eyes and a bright, brilliant smile that had once made him happily sacrifice his dignity to the gods of the stage. He stared at the ceiling, nearly unblinking, and absorbed the sense of quiet, unfilled space all around him.


	7. Fire and Cell: Reid

**Title: **On Fire**  
Character(s): **Spencer Reid**  
Prompt:** fanfic 100 #52 Fire and story lottery #25 a cell**  
Rating:** FRT (drug use)**  
Summary:** Prisons come in all shapes and sizes, and we are all prisoners of our desires.**  
Author's Notes:** A story about Reid's glossed-over drug habit, so it takes place during all of that. I don't want anyone to think I'm glorifying drug use here; I hope all my descriptions of how bad Reid looks makes you guys realize that, but just in case... Standard disclaimers apply: I own nothing; suing would be pointless and cruel.

**At night I wake up with the sheets soakin' wet**  
**And a freight train runnin' through the middle of my head;**  
**Only you can cool my desire.**  
**Ohh, I'm on fire.**  
-Bruce Springsteen, "I'm On Fire"

He opened puzzled hazel eyes, set deep in a pensive, intelligent face, and blinked in the dark. It was the train whistle that had woken him, he realized. Their hotel was nearer to the tracks than he was used to, and the train's restless howl had pulled him out of his light doze with almost obscene ease.

The thin young man sat up; shook off the vestiges of sleep like the arms of a clinging lover; noticed he was shaking. It hadn't just been the whistle. He pushed sticky, damp curls back off his forehead with a trembling hand. The sheet was adhered to his lanky frame like a winding cloth; he peeled it away slowly, revealing pale skin marked by yellowed bruises; faded, but still there to remind him of what he'd so recently suffered.

As if he could ever forget.

His thin body _was_ shaking, like a leaf on a branch, and for a moment he just sat and let the tremors roll through him. He closed his eyes and wrapped long arms around his skinny chest and rocked with them; let them block out the nightmares that threatened to overwhelm him. How could he live with it? How could he live with the memories…the bruises would disappear, but he would never stop _remembering_…

A long-fingered hand groped blindly in the dark, searching through the nightstand drawer, reaching past ubiquitous Bible and cheap notepad and generic hotel pen. The sensitive fingertips brushed against the cold bottle, and it rolled away from his fumbling grip. He cursed; debated turning on the light. What would be revealed by its harsh glare? He felt like a cockroach; to what safe darkness could he scuttle to hide his sins?

Rolling his eyes at his own melodrama, he nevertheless left the room in shadow as he opened the drawer wider and began rooting with both hands. At last he found what he so desperately sought, and with a little wheeze of triumph he held the small glass vial up to the sliver of light that squeezed through the hotel's blackout curtains. The clear liquid glowed like ambrosia in the orange beam, and the young genius stared at it hungrily.

The train whistle was louder now, closer; more mournful, if such a thing were possible. Reid listened to it with half an ear as he studied the beautiful bottle in his hand. He wanted the liquid it contained more than he'd ever wanted anything in his young life. Longing for it burned in him like fire, like hot liquid poured through his veins. He _ached_ with need. He wanted the relief it promised, the comfort, a cool balm to his burn. Tobias had been right: it made everything better. Everything.

He realized he'd whispered it aloud: _everything_.

He'd escaped the Henkels' prison only to find himself trapped in a different one. Spencer Reid was a genius, and he knew exactly what kind of fire he was playing with, what kind of thin ice he was dancing on…but he didn't care. When he stole the vials of Dilaudid off of Tobias' body, he'd known exactly what he was doing. He'd known what sort of trap he was setting for himself. Why had he done it?

He was jeopardizing his career. He was alienating his friends. He was doing possibly permanent damage to his body.

And for what? A few minutes' bliss? A few moments' peace? He could try meditation…

The train whistled again. The young man jumped; fumbled the bottle. Gripped it tighter than ever. Panted like a panicked animal. He slumped back against the bed's cheap, uncomfortable headboard, still breathing in short gasps, and listened to the ache of the addict wash over him. It didn't matter; he had what he needed to take it away. The needle as key to his prison of aching want.

He sat up again. For some ridiculous reason he had stashed the needles in his toiletry kit, as though separating drug and means to dispense it would slow him down. He'd been fooling himself when he'd done it, and now it just meant a walk across an unfamiliar room in the dark – but he had to pee anyway. Amazing, considering how much he'd been sweating.

The thin young man rose on long, shaky legs and made his uncertain way across the shadowy terrain. He jammed his shin against the other bed and cursed for a while, employing words that his colleagues would've been surprised he even _knew_, and down right shocked to hear him _say_. Once in the bathroom he had no choice but to flip on the light, and he squinted in its harsh fluorescent glare.

It buzzed overhead like a fly in a bottle.

He used the toilet, washed his hands, and then began rooting through his kit, all the while trying to avoid meeting his own gaze in the mirror. He found a needle, and as he pulled it from the brown leather satchel containing toothpaste and deodorant and the other accoutrements of personal hygiene, he made the mistake of looking up. The face in the mirror was one he didn't recognize for a moment, and he was so startled that he dropped the entire bag; drug store stuff rolled off the vanity and across the tile floor, behind the toilet, under the counter.

His eyes were always deep-set, surrounded by dark circles, but the face staring back at him looked almost skeletal: the eyes burned out from dark holes with blazing, fevered intensity. There was a purplish bruise along the jaw. The cheeks were sunken. The hair was lanky and wild. A long-fingered hand ran over his bare chest, and he could practically count the ribs by feel. The apparition in the mirror winced as the hand hit a sore spot.

With deliberate care he set the bottle of Dilaudid on the vanity beside the scattered contents of his toiletry kit. He watched himself in the mirror as he removed the cap from the needle and plunged it into the vial; filled it with delicious poison. He kept watching, eyes burning even more intensely, as he found a vein in his stick-thin arm and stuck the needle in.

He didn't push the plunger down. His own eyes challenged him, dared him, begged him. He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. They stood staring at each other for several heartbeats more, young man and his spectral, skeletal reflection, made ghastly by the ravages of ordeal and drugs and harsh fluorescent light. At last the young man closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of himself, and pressed the plunger. As his veins filled with cool euphoria, he slipped to the bathroom floor and floated on a cloud of perfect, blissful joy.


	8. Breath: Reid JJ

**The Work of Breathing**

**Characters/Pairing: **J.J./Reid  
**Prompt:** #96, Writer's Choice  
**Rating:** T  
**Summary:** J.J. attempts to comfort Reid after his ordeal with Henkel.  
**Author's Notes**: I wouldn't consider this a necessarily sexual relationship. Friendship takes many forms.

**Take my hand;  
Knot your fingers through mine,  
And we'll walk from this dark room one last time.  
**-Snow Patrol, "Open Your Eyes"

He turned away.

She reached for his hand.

The silence between them was liquid and golden and thick, like honey left out in the cold. Viscous.

"I shouldn't have let you go alone."

He tried to shrug; winced. "Better me than you. I'm sorry about…the dogs."

Her mouth opened to reply; closed again with a snap. What could she say? _Sorry about the kidnapping_? Though he tried to stop her, she took his finely made, long-fingered hand in her smaller one. "Look at me, Spence."

Slowly, slowly his head rotated toward her. His hazel eyes were like a storm, and it was all she could do not to flinch. Instead she reached up and brushed the hair back from his forehead, soothing him with her gentle touch. Her hand ran over the top of his head, around the curve of his skull; he wanted to into it arch like a cat.

Resisting, he sat and watched her with big, haunted eyes. Weary, he scrubbed his thin chest with a splayed hand. "It hurts to breathe, J.J. I wish I could _stop_. Just for a minute."

"I know." She curled up next to him on the narrow bed. "I know, love."


End file.
